Coined money has always served as an item of barter. Coins and tokens have been traditionally utilize to bestow some honor or accolade on their receiver or possessor. Coins still continue to fascinate collectors, and frequently are the main, or the only, actual physical item that still survives and testifies about bygone epochs.
Presently, coins or tokens have been primarily minted or forged to satisfy some single specific purpose. Changing this purpose requires minting a new or different coin. Furthermore, display space on the surface of a coin is extremely limited, causing the face to contain only the bare essentials. Fine details are often crude or left out altogether due to artificial curbs placed on production costs, and due to technological limitations of standard minting practices.
In some instances, tokens fulfill an educational or testimonial purpose by paying tribute to some object, place or event. In the latter capacity, a token has limited utility due to extremely limited space of the coin faces or top surfaces. The minters of such coins are faced with reducing the face image to some arbitrary symbol that represents the purpose of the coin. Frequently the symbol is meaningless to all except the select few that designed or approved the symbolic coin. The present invention aims to correct this existing shortcoming, by introducing descriptive pictures, graphics and short video clips that will be a lot more informative to wide audiences, and thus increase awareness or popularity of an object, place or event being depicted on such a coin.
Overwhelming majority of coins today that are used as money, albeit possessing little if any intrinsic value. Coins represent one of the earliest form of what used to be commodity money. Since it is generally easier to counterfeit coins than paper money, coins of higher value, like the Euro or the Dollar coins are frequently forged, prompting governments to take extensive measures to guard against counterfeiters. One of the main anti-counterfeiting measures has been the use of dual metal forging. The significant cost of this technique has been the main deterrent against forgeries. However, proliferation of sophisticated dyes has undermined the effectiveness of the dual forging technique.
The present invention can easily replace traditional coins as money, while at the same time tremendously shoring up the anti-counterfeiting measures. The minting authorities will now be able to implement efforts such as authentication ships, and the use of remote uploaded imagery that is synchronized with a central source. The ability the change images will serve to add tremendous flexibility to the appearance of a coin at any given moment, as well as counterfeit manufacturing much too expensive to justify the effort and the risks.
The present invention features a display screen that shows images of data that is stored within the display screen, or with the coin itself. The image displayed may indicate the source of the coin, the purpose of minting or monetary denomination. The display screen may be adapted to many purposes. Therefore, changing the stated value of a coin may be as easy as loading a new image or installing a new display screen.